A new news department is on-the-air in Lafayette, IN.

FIRST ON THE BLOG: Say hello to the newest kids on the block in Lafayette, Indiana. Meet WPBI 16, where the newest local news to hit the market just debuted this week.

WPBI 16 is home to the newest FOX and NBC affiliates in the market and on Monday, it debuted a new news department for the local market called Star City News. Before I go any further, just to let you know, the news department is partly outsourced to a service in Little Rock, Arkansas, which means that the studios of the broadcast come from Arkansas while reporters and some other on-air personnel are based in Lafayette.

Now, the newscasts are only on-air on weekdays with no morning, midday or weekend broadcasts initially offered at this time and considering that its just weekdays only to begin with since it only debuted this week, its a nice start.

Star City News offers three half-hour weekday-only newscasts. The first one is on at 6:00 p.m. on NBC 16, which is broadcast on WPBI-LD 16.2 and this newscast competes against the LONG-TIME and super-established WLFI 18 (CBS) and its 6:00 p.m. news. The next one is a first for the small market… 10:00 p.m. primetime news on FOX 16, which is the main signal of WPBI-LD 16. It’s the first-ever primetime newscast for the small market as WLFI 18 does not offer one in that timeslot due to CBS programming. Finally, there’s another edition at 11:00 p.m. that’s also on NBC 16 and it also competes against WLFI 18 for local news in that time slot in the market.

Those are the only three for now which means that WLFI 18 is still home to the area’s only 7-day-a-week news with the only morning, midday, 5:00 and weekend news in the area. But at least there’s finally some competition to the long-time news leader in Lafayette.

So congrats to WPBI 16 and good luck to them on this new adventure. They’re gonna need all the luck in the world for this.